Today, people commonly turn a blind eye and a blind mind to the plagues that threaten to destroy Western culture and human identity, and that move silently beneath the face of placid waters. Fifty years ago today, Steven Spielberg’s suspense thriller, Jaws, took the world by surprise as the pulsing two-note theme and the invisible [...]
Propelled into Supreme Command, and without ever having commanded in battle, Dwight Eisenhower was put into an almost impossible situation, having to meet the demands of his battlefield subordinates while satisfying the conflicting expectations and orders of his masters, both military and political. Eisenhower at War, 1943-1945, by David Eisenhower (977 pages, Random House, 1986). [...]
In essence, The Imaginative Conservative is a community of philosophers, dedicated to examining, understanding, and enjoying God’s creation. What better anthem for this journal than Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn’s remarkable Symphony No. 22 in E flat major, known as the “Philosopher” Symphony? Though the nickname was probably not Haydn’s, it was given to the work [...]
Richard Wagner’s story of gods and heroes, of giants and dwarfs, is not a fairy tale. It is addressed to modern people, who have lost the ways of enchantment, and for whom the path to heroism is overgrown. It is a story in which law and love, power and property are all caught up in [...]
The bonds among the Church, the Holy Family, and the “domestic church” founded on the sacrament of marriage are intimate and profound. In a host of formal and informal pronouncements and teachings, Pope John Paul II consistently underlined the central importance of the family as the basic cell of human society, and sacramental marriage as the sole foundation [...]
"Too wild and terrible" is what Ludwig van Beethoven is reported to have said about Mozart's famous Requiem. And despite the popularity of this great, unfinished work, the "wild and terrible" side of Mozart has generally been obscured in the public mind, in favor of his seemingly "lighter" works: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, the overture to [...]
Pope St. John Paul II and Russell Kirk defended freedom within the limits of truth and its authentic or right use. They knew it was crucial to distinguish license and liberty. But they have different approaches to truth. As we discussed the work of Russell Kirk, written in 1954, revised in 1962 and 1988, I [...]
The experience of nostalgia is a feeling of beauty’s remoteness, but only because it is so far in the future. It is hope. I went for a long walk in Oxford the other night. The city, of course, is always enchanting, but in early summer and at night, it is so the most. When summer [...]
Through unnamed sources involved in the proceedings, these notes were smuggled out of the Celestial Courtroom, where the ongoing evaluation of the Nations takes place in Committee Hearings in preparation for the Final Judgment. St. Peter was the presiding Chairman, Senator Screwtape the first witness. [Classified Top Secret, Embargo on Distribution] St. Peter: We are [...]
Willmoore Kendall contended that the conventional interpretation of John Locke, depicting him as an exponent of individualism and natural rights which transcended majority sentiments, was in error. By any reasonable standard of measurement, Willmoore Kendall would have to be included in a list of the most important political scientists of the post-World War II era. [...]
Against a modern age that denied notions of meaning, purpose, and truth, Richard Weaver articulated a conservatism of hope and affirmation based on the Platonic-Christian heritage and its manifestation in the American South. Richard Weaver reasoned it was the emergence of nominalism, the departure from Platonism and Christianity, which produced the intellectual heresies leading to [...]
Traditional rankings of the American presidents ask whether our chief executives did what was necessary for the good of the country. But should we look to their fidelity to the Constitution as a better way to evaluate their behavior in office? 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America: And Four Who Tried to Save Her, by [...]
Confronted with choices between evil and good, man frequently chooses evil with its accompanying anguish. Would not wisdom and prudence dictate that man ought to be modest, restrained, and humble—in a word, pious? Born in Weaverville, North Carolina in 1910, Richard Malcolm Weaver was raised in Lexington, Kentucky. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, Weaver graduated [...]
Classical music comes to us from a very long and very human tradition. The concert hall thus should be the embodiment of classical music’s character: It should above all feel human, feel familiar, feel knowable, and feel intimate as often as it feels exalted. Hot on the heels of what was surely disappointing news for Maris [...]